snp.1.11 Suttanipata

Whether walking or standing still,
down one sits or lays it down,
bends it in or stretches it—
it’s just the body’s movement.

This body by bones and sinews bound,
bedaubed by membranes, flesh
and covered all over by skin—
not seen as it really is:

Filled with guts, with stomach filled,
with bladder, liver-lump
with heart and lungs it’s filled,
with kidneys too and spleen.

Liquids like spittle and snot
together with sweat and fat,
with blood and oil for the joints,
with bile and grease for the skin.

Then by the streaming nine
impurity oozes out:
from the eye there’s dirt of eyes,
from ears, wax—dirt of ears,

Snot-mucuses from nose,
vomit at times from the mouth,
sometimes phlegm’s spewed forth,
and from the body sweat and dirt.

And then within its hollow head
bundled brains are stuffed—
the fool thinks all is beautiful,
by ignorance led on.

But when it’s lying dead,
bloated and livid blue,
cast away in the charnel-ground
kin care for it not.

Then dogs devour, jackals too,
wolves and worms dismember it,
crows and vultures tear at it,
and other creatures too.

A monk who’s wise,
having heard the Buddha’s teaching,
understands that,
for he sees it as it really is.

Contemplate: this living body,
that corpse was once like this
and as that corpse is now
so will this body be—
for body then discard desire,
whether within or without.

Such a monk who’s wise, desire
and lust discarded utterly,
attains to Deathlessness, to peace,
Nirvāṇa, the unchanging state.

But this foetid, foul, two-footed thing,
is pampered, though filled
with varied sorts of stench, as well
with oozing here and there.

Whoever such a body has,
but thinks to exalt themselves,
or to despise another—
what’s this but wisdom’s lack?